Category Archives: Economics

Durbin Moves to Block Access to Vitamins, Supplements

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There is no satiating the hunger for more power in our federal government. Politicians will scare you about sugary beverages loaded with caffeine as examples of the dangerous and ‘unregulated’ supplement industry.

Meanwhile, consumers load up at Starbucks and other coffee shops – where they can easily down cups and cups of this ‘dangerous’ substance. You don’t see Durbin beating down the door of Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts, even though coffee is the primary source where most people get their caffeine fix.

When you notice this type of hypocrisy, you can usually bet there is a serious industry influence behind the scenes. There is a campaign push assaulting the supplement industry by those hoping to gain control of it. Essentially, if supplements become regulated like drugs – only the drug companies will be manufacturing them.

By setting new regulations and gaining control of the industry, big pharma can charge higher prices and make higher profits.

Surprisingly, a newly released GAO Dietary Supplements report has recently shown just how safe dietary supplements really are. There are always bad products in every industry, but overall, supplements appear to be one of the safest of all consumable products.

Senator Durbin has been on a mission that appears, at least superficially, to stem from concern over “your health.” However, when scrutinized more closely, Durbin’s proposed legislation would have precisely the opposite effect.

If Senator Durbin is genuinely concerned about “your health,” then his focus should be on making drugs and vaccines safer, which are the real danger — not dietary supplements. …

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/06/19/durbin-supplement-bill.aspx?e_cid=20130619_DNL_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20130619

Sesame Street Helps Kids Cope with Prison Slavery Complex

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‘Sesame Street’ is brought to you by the letter ‘P’ – for Prison.

The children’s educational show is about to tackle the problem of incarceration head on and they’ve created a new Muppet, Alex, whose dad is in jail.

He is the first character to join the likes of Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and Elmo, who will teach young children about how to cope when their mom or dad is incarcerated.

One in 28 children in the United States now has a parent behind bars – more than the number of kids with a parent who is deployed….

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2343867/Sesame-Street-creates-Muppet-dad-jail-teach-kids-cope-Mommy-Daddy-goes-prison.html

The Gold Game

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I’m not an economist, but I don’t agree that gold is the answer, partly because the financial scammers already have most of it, but in any case gold bugs skirt the underlying issue that all money is fiat including gold, since like all other currencies, it’s only supported by the perception that what you’re paid for services rendered will still be worth at least as much when you spend it.  The key is to recognize that “the people” acting through their government have the right to define and control money for their own benefit as specified in the constitution. The IMF’s SDR scam referenced in the video is just more bankster shell games and if adopted, will complete their takeover of the world.  Publicly controlled sovereign money is the only way out.  See monetary.org.

Still there’s a lot to take away here, most especially that the current system does necessitate very high level and broad secret coordination among seemingly independent actors on the world stage.  Here’s a mind-blowing illustration of this fact:

17) Why didn’t nationalized money systems work in the former Soviet countries?
Because their monetary systems were still controlled from within their banking systems, using the same faulty methods. The 1966 Federal Reserve publication Money, Banking, and Credit in Eastern Europe states:
“In the communist countries, money is created in the same way as in capitalist countries – through the extension of bank credit. This fact is not generally recognized or accepted in the various countries of Eastern Europe. The result is that a good deal of confusion emerges from their economic literature with regard to the nature of money and the role of the monetary process and the function of the banking system.… Since Marx identified money with gold, the official theory holds paper money to be merely a substitute for gold and ignores deposit money.” (p. 42-43)

http://www.monetary.org/intro-to-monetary-reform/faqs

In other words, at its core, the soviet economy functioned in much the same way as the west’s, the only difference is which mask (corporate or governmental) concealed the money powers that controlled it.  This raises the question of the degree to which both east and west were/are controlled by the same people.

Corporations working out new nightmare trade agreement

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On critical issues, the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) being negotiated in secret by the Obama administration willundermine democracy in the United States and around the world and further empower transnational corporations. It will circumvent protections for health care, wages, labor rights, consumers’ rights and the environment, and decrease regulation of big finance and risky investment practices.

The only way this treaty, which will be very unpopular with the American people once they are aware of it, can be approved is if the Obama administration avoids the democratic process by using an authority known as “Fast Track,” which limits the constitutional checks and balances of Congress.

If the TPP is approved, the sovereignty of the United States and other member nations will be dissipated by trade tribunals that favor corporate power and force national laws to be subservient to corporate interests. …

For most of the history of the United States, treaties and trade agreements went through the normal congressional process described in the Constitution. Fast Track is a relatively new concept that coincides with an era of increasing presidential power, which includes the power to declare war and to murder US citizens without warning or judicial oversight. If Congress had reviewed agreements such as the WTO and NAFTA beforehand and civil society had been able to participate in a democratic process, would the United States have made the mistake of passing these laws that have so injured our economy and others?

Fast Track is very unpopular, so now President Obama and others who advocate for it do not use the term. Instead they call it by the euphemism “Trade Promotion Authority.” But changing the name does not change what it is – a method of ceding the constitutional power of Congress and undermining the checks and balances built into the constitutional framework. …

http://itsoureconomy.us/2013/03/transpacific-partnership-will-undermine-democracy-empower-transnational-corporations/

Globalists Were Preparing Syrian War 2 Years Before “Rebellion”

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Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas said that Britain had been preparing gunmen to invade Syria two years before the crisis there flared up in 2011.During a TV show, Dumas said ”I was in Britain two years ago, and I met British officials, some my friends…they admitted that they were up to something in Syria.”

”They even asked me to join them in my capacity as a foreign minister, but I declined,” he added.

He indicated that the plan of striking Syria had been prepared in advance long before the 2011 events, adding that the goal was to overthrow the Syrian government that considers Israel an enemy.

The TV show was dedicated to discussing the war in Syria.

French magazine: ‘Jihadists’ involvement in Syria much bigger than Afghanistan

The French magazine “Le Nouvel Observateur” quoted a senior French official as saying that the participation of French Jihadists in Syria is bigger that their involvement in Afghanistan war.

The French magazine said that the French intelligence verified the identities of 270 French nationals who are fighting in Syria, indicating that their return has become a major concern for the French interior ministry.

The magazine said that the number of European ‘Jihadists’ fighting in Syria ranges between 1,500 and 2,000, in addition to hundreds of Tunisians.

http://www.infowars.com/britain-prepared-for-war-in-syria-two-years-before-the-crisis-flared-up-frances-former-fm-says/

Cozy up to Snuggly the Security BEAR

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United States of Surveillance from MarkFiore on Vimeo.

The NSA surveillance program that harvests everyone’s data can be very useful in building a terrorist profile.  Thanks to data-mining, the authorities could be tipped off to an individual who makes telephone calls to a Muslim from Somalia.  This person also regularly makes and receives phone calls from a convicted felon in the United States and is in Facebook communication with a Pakistani known to be interested in aviation.  The subject also attended school with a close relative of a well-known Saudi arms dealer and has recently made purchases of fertilizer within the United States.  Clearly, the metadata indicates this person warrants further investigation.

This person is me.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my suspicious metadata, I imagine.  I’ll release more as the days progress, and I won’t even make you go to Hong Kong and look for a guy with a Rubik’s Cube.  I have had run-ins with the authorities and have even received official notice of being a “scofflaw.”  (True, though sadly, I seem to have lost the written evidence of being deemed an official scofflaw.)

This NSA surveillance story is amazing, and is thankfully shining a bright light on abuses and overreach within the government.  Kind of funny that my earlier prediction turned out so completely wrong, thanks to Edward Snowden.  Clearly, Snuggly has enough material for a year’s worth of cartoons.

Let Snuggly the Security Bear and I know what you think, and be sure to comment and share the cartoon.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/14/1215831/-United-States-of-Surveillance

NSA Declares 4th Amendment Null and Void

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The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”

If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee…

Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said. [We documented Tuesday that the government is illegally spying on all Americans ... and then giving the info to giant corporations.]

These programs, whose participants are known as trusted partners, extend far beyond what was revealed by Edward Snowden ….

Makers of hardware and software, banks, Internet security providers, satellite telecommunications companies and many other companies also participate in the government programs. In some cases, the information gathered may be used not just to defend the nation but to help infiltrate computers of its adversaries.

Along with the NSA, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and branches of the U.S. military have agreements with such companies to gather data that might seem innocuous but could be highly useful in the hands of U.S. intelligence or cyber warfare units, according to the people, who have either worked for the government or are in companies that have these accords….

The information provided by Snowden also exposed a secret NSA program known as Blarney. As the program was described in the Washington Post (WPO), the agency gathers metadata on computers and devices that are used to send e-mails or browse the Internet through principal data routes, known as a backbone.

That metadata includes which version of the operating system, browser and Java software are being used on millions of devices around the world, information that U.S. spy agencies could use to infiltrate those computers or phones and spy on their users.

“It’s highly offensive information,” said Glenn Chisholm, the former chief information officer for Telstra Corp (TLS)., one of Australia’s largest telecommunications companies, contrasting it to defensive information used to protect computers rather than infiltrate them….

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/the-governments-spying-is-not-as-bad-as-the-whistleblower-said-its-worse.html

WARNING: The National Security Agency is likely recording and storing this communication as part of its unlawful spying programs on all Americans … and people worldwide. The people who created the NSA spying program say that this communication – and any responses – can and will be used against the American people at any time in the future should folks in government decide to go after us for political reasons. And private information in digital communications may be given to big companies by the government.

Mass surveillance doesn’t keep us safe, and even the top national security experts say that we don’t need it. (They also say we should get a grip.)

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/a-free-quick-and-easy-way-to-protest-government-spying.html

I put this in the “genocide/democide” category due to the utility of this program in carrying out an orderly extermination of “undesireables,” which would include pretty much everyone with an independent thought in his/her head.  Dissolution of national boundaries (the “north american union” for instance) requires an erasure of the historical knowledge that gives rise to national identity.  No wonder the secret government supported the khmer rouge experiment in cambodia.  They want to start with a clean slate.  A lobotomy of human history and civilization is what they’re preparing for.  Why not?  Obviously they can afford it as long as we believe their funny money has value.  They’re only taking possession of what we’ve voluntarily given them by borrowing our entire economy into existence.

Syrian WMD’s a Replay of Iraq Propaganda

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A shocking You Tube video shows alleged Syrian rebels testing chemical weapons on lab rabbits before making threats to use them against Syria’s pro-Assad Alawite population….

http://www.infowars.com/shock-video-shows-syrian-rebels-testing-chemical-weapons/

Who has Crossed the “Red Line”? Barack Obama and John Kerry are Supporting a Terrorist Organization on the State Department List
A WMD saga modeled on Iraq based on fabricated evidence is unfolding.  The Western media in chorus relentlessly accuse the Syrian government of premeditated mass-murder, calling upon the “international community” to come to the rescue of the Syrian people.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-forbidden-truth-the-u-s-is-channelling-chemical-weapons-to-al-qaeda-in-syria-obama-is-a-liar-and-a-terrorist/5339004

As “Rebels” Near Defeat – US Plays WMD Card; US to Give Military Support to Syrian Rebels as ‘Red Line’ Crossed

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35276.htm

Wheels Within Wheels: Questions Surround NSA “Leak”

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Is it possible that the PRISM leak was set up by the NSA as a deception operation in support of the Obama Administration’s ongoing wars against whistleblowers and the 4th Amendment? Documents from Federal intelligence contractor HBGary, published in 2011 by anonymous hackers, include a Power Point presentation proposing methods for attacking Wikileaks, and this document names Glenn Greenwald, who broke the PRISM story, as a specific target …

http://www.globalresearch.ca/nsa-deception-operation-questions-surround-leaked-prism-documents-authenticity/5338673

Or, further down the rabbit hole, Webster Tarpley suggested the leak may be a kind of political attack waged by the neocons to push a reluctant obama into an overt syrian military attack.  After all, Snowden’s disclosures are hardly new, they’re only more conveniently packaged for the half-awake.  By that measure, it would appear to have been successful: http://www.prisonplanet.com/man-behind-syrian-chemical-weapons-claim-is-fiction-writer-who-covered-up-benghazi.html

Coincidence: DHS admits Backpack Bomb Drill Planned Before Boston Bombing

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According to the DHS documents acquired by the Boston Globe, the agents were planning on conducting training exercises centered around a fictitious terrorist group called ‘Free America Citizens’, a group that would plant backpacks full of explosives around Boston that the detectives would be forced to track down. Ultimately, of course, this ended up happening at the Boston Marathon itself with precise accuracy. The Globe report reads that “the city was hit with a real terrorist attack executed in a frighteningly similar fashion.”

http://www.prisonplanet.com/dhs-admits-boston-training-drill-involving-backpack-explosives-planned-months-before-marathon.html

The timing was different, the boston bombing happened before the exercise was supposed to happen, but “Free America Citizens” would have been consonant with what appeared to be the original intended target of the frameup, the “right wing religious conservative gun owning veterans” demographic. ( http://www.infowars.com/will-obama-insider-media-mouthpieces-apologise-for-fingering-tea-party-patriots-as-bombers/ )  If the hypothesis is true, some preplanted evidence might still be available somewhere, probably on the net.  Perhaps a website or a facebook page purportedly posted by the chosen patsy.  Evidence that such a site existed and then was taken down after the official story changed would be in keeping with an aborted plan.

There are good reasons to stage a false flag simultaneously with an exercise: you can control the behavior of law enforcement who might otherwise detect the terrorist (keep them busy with the exercise), you have a cover story if he gets caught by legitimate cops before he commits the act (he’s acting out his role in the exercise) and you have a programmed patsy who plants what he thinks is a fake bomb.  The trick is to convince the cops that it was all a terrible coincidence and if they have doubts there are alternative careers available in the restaurant business or perhaps minding the fishes at the bottom of the sea.

Here’s a prime example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKvkhe3rqtc

Greece: IMF Claims Ignorance of Basic Economics

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The International Monetary Fund admitted it didn’t realize how damaging the draconian Greek bailout austerity measures it imposed would be to Greece’s economy.

The 2010-imposed austerity measures in the first bailout helped Greece avoid bankruptcy but also caused the country’s economy, already in recession, to plummet, the IMF said in an internal report made public after its contents were reported by The Wall Street Journal.

In contrast to publicly stated high hopes of the first bailout of $144 billion put together by the “troika” of the IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank in May 2010, “market confidence was not restored, the banking system lost 30 percent of its deposits and the economy encountered a much deeper-than-expected recession with exceptionally high unemployment,” the report said.

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2013/06/06/IMF-admits-Greece-bailout-mistakes/UPI-23021370500200/

…But there is another — more sinister — way in which the IMF’s belated mea culpa is nothing new. The fact of the matter is that these type of self-critical reports by the Fund have been a permanent feature of its management of international financial crises ever since the 1980s. For some reason, every time a debt crisis strikes, the IMF moves in to impose the same short-sighted bailouts, austerity measures and market reforms — and then, several years later, comes to the conclusion that it made major mistakes in its handling of the crisis. Yet it never changes tack: when the next crisis hits, it simply reproduces the same old script: stabilization, privatization, liberalization. Nothing else will do to satisfy the markets, and so the debtors simply have to bend over backwards to satisfy the orthodox neoliberal prescriptions of structural adjustment. …

If these wholesale economic collapses and the consequent destruction of the livelihoods of millions of Latin American and Asian citizens were truly just “mistakes”, resulting from faulty baseline assumptions and flawed econometric modelling, one would expect an international institution staffed by hundreds of Ivy League and Oxbridge PhDs to eventually learn from these mistakes and come up with a somewhat more credible alternative. Wrong. Following the 2001-’02 Argentine financial crisis, the Fund once again admitted to making a series of “mistakes” of historic proportions, culminating into the largest sovereign debt default in world history. As former IMF managing director Michel Camdessus recently recalled, “we probably made many silly mistakes and committed errors with Argentina.” As a result, 60 percent of Argentinians fell into poverty as the country experienced the deepest economic depression in its history.

Over the past thirty years, the world has experienced over a hundred financial crises. So far, the IMF has responded to practically every single one of them with the same defunct policy prescription of rapid fiscal contraction, firesale privatizations and far-reaching neoliberal market reforms. In the vast majority of cases, this orthodox policy response contributed to a deepening of the recession, the loss of millions of jobs, and a humanitarian tragedy of unspeakable proportions. If you make the same mistake a hundred times over, can it still be considered a mistake? Or are we looking at the deliberate reproduction of an ideological script that narrowly serves the interests of private creditors by shifting the burden of adjustment squarely onto the shoulders of the poorest and weakest members in the debtor countries?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/strong-economic-medicine-the-imfs-mistakes-on-greece-are-nothing-new/5338454

See “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” and “The Shock Doctrine” if you want a dose of reality.  These people really have no shame.  Typical psychopaths.

On The Verge… (Bilderberg 2013)

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Nothing like a little humor with your New World Order. John Cleese and Eric Idle would be hard pressed to keep up with today’s reality. This report by Charlie Skelton of The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/05/bilderberg-2013-goldman-sachs-watford   provides a vignette on the preparations of a small town for a large event

Bilderberg 2013: welcome to 1984    by Charlie Skelton

The auditorium grew hushed as a senior Watford borough councillor took to his feet. The police liaison team looked nervous. They had made their presentation and laid out their plans for this “unique event”: the anti-terrorism zones, the identity checks, the restriction on vehicles stopping in the vicinity of this “important international conference”. But now it was the turn of the people of Watford to speak.

What would they make of this international three-day policy summit, with its heavyweight delegate list bulging with billionaire financiers, party leaders and media moguls, protected by the biggest security operation Watford has ever seen?

“What this whole thing boils down to,” boomed the councillor, “is this: are you, or are you not, setting a precedent for vehicles parking on the verge of the Old Hempstead Road?”

Thus began an hour-long (hour-and-a-half-long?) discussion about whether or not cars and press vehicles should be allowed to park on a strip of grass running parallel to the A41, just opposite the Grove hotel. It was like a weird, dystopian episode of Keeping Up Appearances. Never mind that our ministers are meeting in secret with the heads of Shell, BP, Google and Amazon – what about the verge!

There was an audible gasp when, under intense questioning, Chief Inspector Rhodes was forced to admit, citing a “bylaw”, that the no-parking signs on the verge were actually fraudulent: no such law existed.. One lady, almost beside herself, gestured to the audience. “There are media here! This story is going to get out!” The verge would never be the same again, thanks to Bilderberg.

The audience was an odd mix. Half were residents from around the venue worried about the possibility of tyre-damage to a strip of lawn; the other half were journalists from around the world worried about the geopolitical implications of a conference at which BAE, Stratfor and General Petraeus will be discussing “Africa’s challenges”.

Both halves were worried about the funding for the gigantic security operation. The police assured sceptical residents that the conference would be “cost-neutral” for Hertfordshire, thanks in part to a “donation” from the conference organisers. This “donation” will have come, in part at least, from the Bilderberg Association, a registered UK charity that takes “donations” from BP and Goldman Sachs.

At one point in the meeting, during a tense exchange about contingency plans for dog-walkers, Rhodes let slip that Operation Discuss (the codename for the Bilderberg security operation) had been up and running for 18 months. Residents and journalists shared an intake of breath. “Eighteen months?” The reason for all the secrecy? “Terrorism”.

The same threat of “terrorism” was used to justify the no-pedestrian, no-stopping zones near the venue. The police laid out their logic: they had “no specific intelligence” regarding a terror threat. However, in recent incidents, such as Boston and Woolwich, there had been no intelligence prior to the attack. Therefore the lack of any threat of a terror attack fitted exactly the profile of a terror attack. The lack of a threat was a threat. Welcome to 1984.

Here is the guest list and the agenda, courtesy of Michel Chossudovsky and the good folks at Global Research http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-will-be-attending-the-bilderberg-meeting-what-will-be-discussed-behind-closed-doors/5337453

 

 

 

Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman

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The concept of using web-based programs like Google’s Gmail is “worse than stupidity”, according to a leading advocate of free software.

Cloud computing – where IT power is delivered over the internet as you need it, rather than drawn from a desktop computer – has gained currency in recent years. Large internet and technology companies including Google, Microsoft and Amazon are pushing forward their plans to deliver information and software over the net.

But Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, said that cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time.

“It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign,” he told The Guardian.

“Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.”

The 55-year-old New Yorker said that computer users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to a third party. …

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman

Something Very Fishy About Boston Bombing

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We’ve raised reasonable questions about the events surrounding the Marathon bombing in previous articles,  from the presence of mysterious black-clad security men with well-stuffed backpacks at the race to the FBI and CIA’s awareness of the Tsarnaev family long before April 15, 2013. (See this, this and this.)

Now, some might say that nothing else matters as long as police got their men. However, it is often in the details, the “weeds,” if you will, where we find that a narrative can be useful as far as it goes and yet terribly misleading in terms of what it all means. As we’ve noted, many much-loved historical narratives turn out to be little more than carefully crafted myths around a few core facts.

It is with this in mind that we’ve been down in the weeds….

Early reports left the impression that Collier had some kind of active interaction with his killers.

Here’s the Associated Press from that night:

Cambridge police and the Middlesex District Attorney’s office says the officer was responding to a report of a disturbance when he was shot multiple times.

Here’s the MIT News—the publication of the university’s administration—several days later:

On the evening of Thursday, April 18, MIT Police Officer Sean Collier was shot and killed in the line of duty following an altercation at the corner of Vassar Street and Main Street on the MIT campus.

And here’s the Los Angeles Times on April 23, five days after Collier’s death:

WASHINGTON–Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev allegedly shot and killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Thursday because they wanted his service revolver, according to two federal government law enforcement officials who have been briefed on the Boston Marathon manhunt.

They came upon Collier outside a gas station and convenience store near the MIT campus in Cambridge. He was apparently shot multiple times, but had left a safety device on his holster that the suspects could not unlock to retrieve the weapon.

It was unclear which brother shot the officer, the officials said. However, authorities have obtained a surveillance photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, dressed in a gray hoodie, at the store.

This is a false story, circulated days after the events. Collier was not outside a gas station and convenience store. Dzhokhar certainly appears to have gone into a gas station/convenience store later that evening, but Collier was not there and no murder took place at that time. Collier did not respond to a disturbance. He did not approach anyone. In fact, it’s likely he never even knew who shot him.

To this day, hardly anyone in the general public is aware of this glitch in the narrative. Yet it is very important. Because if the initial story had been, “unknown persons came up behind a police officer sitting quietly in his patrol car and shot him for no apparent reason, not even taking his firearm” – that would no doubt have triggered a very different media response.…

http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/05/23/officer-collier-shooting-rosebud-moment-of-the-boston-bombing/

A real reporter doing a real investigation.  If you want to understand his doubts, you need to put on your boots and venture into the weeds with him.  A demonstration of how worthless the MSM is, and how easy it is to steer a story with a few well-placed puppets.

NSA Built Back Door In All Windows Software by 1999

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… A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA “help information” trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.

The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren [an expert in computer security]. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA. …

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/microsoft-programmed-in-nsa-backdoor-in-windows-by-1999.html

Government Tapping CONTENT, Not Just Metadata of Americans’ Communications

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We reported in 2008 that foreign companies have had key roles scooping up Americans’ communications for the NSA:

At least two foreign companies play key roles in processing the information.

Specifically, an Israeli company called Narus processes all of the information tapped by AT &T (AT & T taps, and gives to the NSA, copies of all phone calls it processes), and an Israeli company called Verint processes information tapped by Verizon (Verizon also taps, and gives to the NSA, all of its calls).

Business Insider notes today:

The newest information regarding the NSA domestic spying scandal raises an important question: If America’s tech giants didn’t ‘participate knowingly’ in the dragnet of electronic communication, how does the NSA get all of their data?

One theory: the NSA hired two secretive Israeli companies to wiretap the U.S. telecommunications network.

In April 2012 Wired’s James Bamford — author of the book “The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America” — reported that two companies with extensive links to Israel’s intelligence service provided hardware and software the U.S. telecommunications network for the National Security Agency (NSA).

By doing so, this would imply, companies like Facebook and Google don’t have to explicitly provide the NSA with access to their servers because major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as AT&T and Verizon already allows the U.S. signals intelligence agency to eavesdrop on all of their data anyway.

From Bamford (emphasis ours):

“According to a former Verizon employee briefed on the program, Verint, owned by Comverse Technology, taps the communication lines at Verizon…

At AT&T the wiretapping rooms arepowered by software and hardware from Narus, now owned by Boeing, a discovery made by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein in 2004.”

Klein, an engineer, discovered the “secret room” at AT&T central office in San Francisco, through which the NSA actively “vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T” through the wiretapping rooms, emphasizing that “much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic.”

NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake corroborated Klein’s assertions, testifying that while the NSA is using Israeli-made NARUS hardware to “seize and save all personal electronic communications.”

Both Verint and Narus were founded in Israel in the 1990s. …

Last December, top NSA whistleblower William Binney – a 32-year NSA veteran with the title of senior technical director, who headed the agency’s global digital data gathering program (featured in a New York Times documentary, and the source for much of what we know about NSA spying) – said that the government is using a secret interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act which allows the government to obtain:

Any data in any third party, like any commercial data that’s held about U.S. citizens …

Binney explained that the government is taking the position that it can gather and use any information about American citizens living on U.S. soil if it comes from:

Any service provider … any third party … any commercial company – like a telecom or internet service provider, libraries, medical companies – holding data about anyone, any U.S. citizen or anyone else.

I then asked the NSA veteran if the government’s claim that it is only spying on metadata – and not content – was correct. We have extensively documented that the government is likely recording content as well. (And the government has previously admitted to “accidentally” collecting more information on Americans than was legal, and then gagged the judges so they couldn’t disclose the nature or extent of the violations.)

Binney said that was not true; the government is gathering everything, including content.

Binney explained – as he has many times before – that the government is storing everything, and creating a searchable database … to be used whenever it wants, for any purpose it wants (even just going after someone it doesn’t like). …

Binney next confirmed the statement of the author of the Patriot Act – Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner – that the NSA spying programs violate the Patriot Act. After all, the Patriot Act is focused on spying on external threats … not on Americans.

Binney asked rhetorically: “How can an American court [FISA or otherwise] tell telecoms to cough up all domestic data?!”

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/exclusive-top-nsa-whistleblower-spills-the-beans-on-the-real-scope-of-the-spying-program.html

Also see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcToxgr4xWw&feature=gv